The train rolls again

All my regular readers know that I love trains - big trains and little trains, too. When I was boy, my family had an electric Lionel steam locomotive with a coal car, several freight cars and a caboose. Most of the time, it stayed in boxes, but every now and then my dad would let me get it out, splice the tracks together and then I would run that train late into the night, headlight shining, little puffs of smoke belching from the smokestack, until my parents forced me to shut it down and go to bed.

To make it more interesting, I would sometimes put marbles and toy soldiers, tanks, planes, jets, horses, knights in armor and such on the track. That heavy chunk of steel locomotive would blast its way through it all - and if it did sometimes derail, it was a tough thing and the crash would cause it no harm.

For Christmas of 2000, I bought myself a little HO train. I set it up briefly on my office floor and let it run in circles as my original good black cat, Little Guy, watched, chased, and sometimes batted at it.

Less than two months later, Little Guy vanished and I was left devastated. I do not exaggerate. Devastated. Truly, truly, devastated. No less so than if he had been one of the closest humans to me. Among the things I did to cope was to build a railroad in my office, about eight feet up on the wall above the floor.

Either when Kalib was a baby or before he was born, my locamotive derailed and fell into one of my fish tanks and got ruined. Since that time, my railroad has sat inactive.

But I wanted the boys to see the train go, so a few weeks ago I bought a new locamotive, broke it in a crash before they could see it, got it repaired and now the train is running again.

This weekend, the boys saw it roll for the first time.

They were fascinated. Especially Kalib. "Choo! Choo!" he shouted. "Chugga, chugga, chugga, Chugginton!" 

As you can see, especially in a larger view, the tabby cat, Pistol-Yero, was fascinated, too.

I also have pictures of Jim and Jobe being fascinated, but I will let this one do it by itself.

Come mid-afternoon, I found myself hungry for a hot dog, but there were none. So I got into the car to go get one. Along the way, I passed these firemen and this firetruck.

Can anyone tell me what year this Chevy pickup truck is?

If Scot of Metro Cafe sees this, he will know.

Later, I took a long bike ride, down past the shot-up sign alongside the Little Su, and then way beyond that. It started to rain right after I left the house, and then rained on me until I got home. It was a cold rain and it was windy and I had no jacket but only a t-shirt, but I didn't care.

If I had cared, I would have turned around and went home.

If you view this in large view, you can see actual raindrops that have fallen from the sky and are about to strike the ground.

I returned home the long way, so that I could pedal a little further. These two passed me up, but just barely. Not so long ago, I announced that I was taking this blog into retreat mode for the remainder of the summer, as the work burden on me is too great to spend more than a minimal amount of time per day on this blog.

Due to events like the Fourth of July, my birthday, visits of the boys and such, I have somewhat retreated from that retreat, but the time gun is really pointed at my head now, so I am going back into retreat. Again, I will still try to post every day, but not much.

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Passing airplane still generates magic; a man, a horse, and Catahoula; two girls on a riverbank; four-wheeler in the river; ice cream on the face

Despite all the work facing me, I remained lazy throughout the remainder of the day. One should not work on magical days such as yesterday, especially when his grandsons are present.

I was out in the back yard with Margie and the boys when an airplane passed overhead. I remembered when I was a child how wonderful, mystical, and magical it was to see an airplane pass overhead. What with their constant viewing of videos, the trips to the 3D movies and all that, could Kalib and Jobe ever possibly get that same feeling from watching an airplane pass overhead?

Ha! Kalib got the feeling!

And so did Jobe!

In the afternoon, I took off on a 16 mile bike ride. It wasn't long enough. It was too short. I wanted to go and go, but I figured I would be gone too long. Down on Sunrise Drive, I saw a man, a horse, and a dog coming toward me.

It was these three - the man is Jim, the horse is Warrior and the dog is Chain. Chain is a Catahoula Leopard Dog, a breed that I had never heard of.

"I never thought I would wind up with a Catahoula," Jim said. "But I did."

I looked Catahoula up on Google and found they originated in Louisana. Here is part of what I learned about them:

The Catahoula Leopard Dog is independent, protective, and territorial. Loving with its family and all people they know well and reserved with strangers (this would include strange children)...

These dogs need attention. This is not a dog that can be tied to a doghouse, fed, and ignored. Chaining and or ignoring a Catahoula Leopard Dog will either make them shy or aggressive. They need human companionship. This breed needs direction, training, something to do, people, attention...

A Catahoula Leopard Dog enjoys the company of a good horse...

Maybe I made up one of the above lines.

I pedaled until it looked like the road was about to end in someone's yard.

On the way back, I decided to stop, climb up the rise over the road and see what I could see. This is what I saw - the Little Susitna River, with two girls sitting on the bank. Hence, this series of studies, beginning with:

Two girls on a riverbank, study #4,328: They stick their feet in the water.

Two girls on a riverbank, study #2: The sky overhead.

Two girls on a riverbank, study #282,881: they are joined by a dog.

I shot this four-wheeler image as I pedaled across the bridge that crosses the Little Su.*

*In comments, reader AkPonyGirl has pointed out that it is illegal to drive a four-wheeler in the Little Su, due to the damage they cause to salmon spawn.  Thank you, AkPonyGirl.

About 10:00 PM, I mentioned the words, "ice cream cone" and Kalib got excited. So I loaded up the boys, left Margie home for some moments of solitude and headed off to Dairy Queen. On the way, we saw a rainbow and began to chase it.

We did not catch it, but we did overshoot Dairy Queen, so we turned around at the next stoplight and headed back in the direction of ice cream.

At Dairy Queen, we got our cones, then parked for awhile. In the outside driver's rearview mirror, I saw two Dairy Queen workers, taking a break.

The boys and their cones. After I took this picture, I started the car back up and drove home.Jobe was a sticky mess when we got home, but the cone made it all the way without being dumped on the floor, in his lap or on Kalib and that was a first.

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Four-wheelers tearing up and down a grassy hill; Jobe sleeps, spinning color-wheel drives me to brink

I was pedaling my bicycle home last night about 10:00 PM when these young hell-raisers zipped past, raced up the hill ahead of me, shot back down again and then disappeared in a cloud of dust.

This is our own youngest, already-out-of-the-womb, young hell raiser, Jobe, gone down to sleep through the night.

I wonder... 

if, in a very short while...

...he and his brother might themselves be on four-wheelers, tearing up the tax-payer planted grass of local roadside hillsides...

...?????

This is pretty much how I have spent the last several days - watching this damn color wheel seem to spin 'round and 'round forever and on to infinity as I have sat at my computer desperately and futilely trying to complete my project so that I can send it to press. I had anticipated having all the photos completely processed and converted to CMYK by today, then I would go to Barrow tomorrow, fill in the missing text blanks, get everything tweaked and proofed by the end of the week and be to press by early next week.

Instead, I have been watching this damn color ball spin - and when it spins my computer won't do anything else. I am not even close. And despite all efforts by Machous and myself to fix the problem, it will not be fixed. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. It just grows steadily and steadily worse. This computer is done for.

Last night, somewhere between midnight and 1:00 AM, I just gave up. There is no point of even trying to finish up on this computer any longer. I simply must replace this computer. Until I do, I am stuck, I can't accomplish anything.

So, as soon as I get my next check, hopefully tomorrow, money that I had planned to put to other uses will go into a new computer. I have no choice. I have to do it.

Maybe it will make things better for this blog, though.

Regular readers have undoubtedly noted the exasperation that I have felt now over the past weeks... months... with the amount of time this blog has been taking. They have noted me cutting back, and promising to cut back more.

I think this computer has been in decline for awhile, wasting a bit of time here, a bit of time there, time that I dismiss but that cumulatively adds up until finally it has reached the point of unbearability.

Take this post, for example. It is now 2:16 PM, Sunday. When I got up, I knew it was going to take awhile, so I opened Lightroom and then let it begin to import yesterday's take of 416 RAW images while I went off, cooked and ate breakfast and twice chased Jim into the woods when he thought he was finally about to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a mountain lion.

If this computer were up to par, that transfer of RAW images from card to harddrive with thumbnails on display in Lightroom would have taken somewhere between five and ten minutes. 

After doing all that I have described, the task was barely half-way done.

When the computer is up to speed, I can edit and begin processing the early pictures that pop up on my screen even before the download is complete. Now, I do not dare, for things will just completely bog down and nothing will ever complete.

Finally, though, after a couple of hours, the pictures were thumbnailed and on display in Lightoom.

However, if tried to look at them all, each time I switched from one to another, I would get a spinning colorwheel that would last anywhere from two or three to ten to fifteen or 20 minutes.

So I did not look at my take. I went right to the fourwheeler shots, grabbed the one that appears here without looking at the others, then spent about half an hour struggling to get it through the RAW to jpeg conversion process and then did the same with the other two.

And then it took forever to load the three into Squarespace. Once here, I can type at a normal pace.

Still, it has taken me a bunch of hours to put up this three-picture post. For this blog, I do my pictures "quick and dirty." And it has taken me this long. For Uiñiq, I take my time, try to get it just right (although I never quite succeed as I would like). So you can see what an impossible task I have faced.

It is good thing that our house does not sit on the edge of the cliff. I am so exasperated at the moment that I might jump right off it.

Rumor has it that in July, Apple will release a new, improved, faster computer to replace the Mac Pro series of which I have one of the early releases. It will just fry my brain to no end to buy the current model and then the next week find that Apple has just released the new and improved, swifter version for about the same price. But I cannot wait. I need the computer NOW!

And even if it is not as good as what will be out in a week or two for the same price, it will still be the fastest and best computer that I have ever used. So I can't wait. I must buy now.

Just as soon as I get my next check. Hopefully, tomorrow.

Today is Caleb's birthday - 35 years old. The whole family is coming out to celebrate. Except he won't be here. He just took off to hang with his buddies. He did not tell us he had plans but he did. We did not tell him we were going to celebrate, but just took it for granted that he would know.

Oh well. I think it is good for him to build up his social life.

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Dog carries blue football to grave; boy smiles on fourwheeler; two thought they would employ sexy girls to compete with Metro, but the Metro girl won

I was pedaling my bike through the graveyard when suddenly I saw the dog, Cloe, standing in front of this grave with a football in her mouth. What a predicament! I knew that the moment I stopped, Cloe would become interested in me and would turn away from the grave but I was already alongside the grave and if I did not stop I would roll right past before I could even lift my camera and then if I turned back the dog would move. I squeezed both brakes hard and then, even before I came to a complete stop, let go of the right while still squeezing the left, lifted my camera and shot as I was almost catapulted over the handle bars. 

If I had been, and if I had broken my neck and died on the spot, they wouldn't have had to carry me far. They could have just dug a hole and dropped me in right there. 

Except I want to be cremated and to have my ashes scattered here and there, from the Arctic Slope to Hatcher Pass to Arizona to India. So that wouldn't work, after all.

I got the framing and the moment good, but, damnit! When I pedal my bike I try to keep my shutter speed at 1/400 of a second or so, but sometimes the knob rubs against my clothing and changes the shutter speed without me knowing it.

That's what happened here - the shutter speed had slipped down to 1/40th of a second and at that speed, from the seat of a bike that I am bringing to a stop while almost going over the handle bars, there is no way I am not going to get motion blur.

I capture a once-in-a-lifetime moment and it is blurred.

Oh well. From the vantage point of life, death is kind of a blur, anyway. I guess I just have to live with it. 

Sure enough, when I came to a complete stop, Cloe dropped the ball and came to me.

A bit further on, I saw these two, the little one looking back at another four-wheeler.

This is Sean, in a photo that I took inside Metro Cafe after pedaling my bike here at breakfast time because Margie had taken the car to Anchorage so she could babysit Kalib and Jobe.

Sean lives just a couple of hundred yards or so up Lucille Street from Metro and he and his buddy Justin had been planning to start a coffee shop of their own and then Carmen and Scott built Metro and beat them to the punch. Still, they thought they might do it. They could still build their stand and hire beautiful, sexy, girls to serve as baristas - baristas in bikinis, no less.

So, for awhile, they stayed away from Metro. They did not want to take a chance that they might come in and then find they actually liked the coffee and the people, because then they might be reluctant to build their shop and compete with them.

But finally, they came in to sample the competition's product. There, they beheld the beautiful-always-modestly-and-tastefully-attired-young-writer barista Shoshana and that was it. Justin fell in love.

So did Shoshana. And one coffee shop staffed by bikini-clad baristas who would be popsicles for eight months of the year fell to the wayside without ever opening.

Now Sean comes often in the mornings, often by himself, to sit, eat, drink coffee, shoot the bull and lament with Carmen. He laments because once, not so long ago, he and Justin were together most all the time, hanging out, being best friends, cooking up schemes.

Now, Justin is always with the  beautiful-always-modestly-and-tastefully-attired-young-writer barista Shoshana - who was not working this morning.

That's why I didn't do one of my famous studies on her. Instead, I did the above study:

Inside the Metro Cafe, Study #1976: Sean, who did not get to open a coffee shop staffed by sexy, bikini-clad baristas

Sean is an ex-Mormon, by the way. Now he goes to a different church. He didn't say which one, but apparently, judging from what Carmen said, he takes it pretty seriously.

From my bike, as I pedal down Gail Street, through the rain. Today is sunny. Sunny and warm. An airplane is passing overhead. Jim is walking back and forth across my desk and keyboard, blocking my view of my monitor, meowing impatiently. He wants me to take him outside. I try to take him out for awhile everyday now that summer is here. 

But it is never enough for him. He always wants more.

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Memorial Day, 2011: the big water battle; flowers at roadside memorial; we feast

On the final night of Kalib and Jobe's final Memorial Day weekend visit with us, Jacob and Lavina came out to sleep at our house. On Memorial Day morning, we went to breakfast at Denali Family Restaurant. I fear that I am shifting my loyalties from the old Mat-Su Family Restaurant to Denali. It is the hash browns, that is why.

Hash browns have always been a gamble at Mat-Su. You just never know - they can come fried to a crisp, reduced to mush, or cooked just right. So far, they have been cooked just right at Denali every time - and it sure seems that they are fresh cut and not taken from a package. They are as good as any hash browns I have ever eaten, anywhere.

Denali Family Restaurant hash browns are superb!

Mat-Su Family has long been a place of morning refuge for me and I feel kind of bad about shifting over, but that's what excellent hash browns will do.

I will still go to Mat-Su, sometimes - if for no other reason than old times sake.

Later, in the early afternoon, Margie and Lavina went to the store to do some shopping. After awhile, I went out to see what the three boys were doing. Jimmy came with me. We found two of the three boys watching a butterfly pass overhead.

I am not certain what the other one was into.

Then Kalib turned on the faucet. He began to fling water around.

Soon, both boys were getting a bit wet and muddy. Jobe was most interested in the process.

Kalib got the idea that it might be fun to spash his brother, so he did.

After taking the blast of cold water, Jobe turned and momentarily fled.

In just seconds, he fully recovered, and began to laugh. He laughed so hard he blew the snot right out his nose.

Dad joined in the fight, allying himself with Jobe.

Oh, it was a battle insane!

Jobe was most amused.

Kalib checks his ammo as Jobe strategizes.

Jacob knew that he had to get the boys dried off and cleaned up before Mom and Grandma came home.

Jobe didn't stay clean very long.

As all this had been going on, Jim had found a patch of dirt to roll around in. Only his face remained undusted.

Jim then trotted off into the woods. I cannot let him go there alone, so I followed.

So did the other three.

Then the ladies came home. We guys mentioned nothing at all about the battle that had taken place. The ladies can find out when they read this blog. Jake will be in big trouble then.

The boys and their dad lay down to nap. I took off to ride my bike. I found a broken scooter on the Seldon Road bike trail, just lying there, abandoned.

I wondered what the story behind that was?

If I had the time, I would write a novel based on this mysterious scooter. It would be a best seller. I don't have the time. If you do, feel free to steal my idea - go ahead, write a novel based on this image.

When I reached the corner of Church and Schrock Roads, I was reminded that although Memorial Day was established at the end of the Civil War as a holiday to honor and mourn our military dead, it has also become a time that people take to honor all their dead, to bring flowers to graves and memorials.

This is not a grave, but is the place where where three people were killed in 1999 in a collision caused by a drunk driver - a woman, a teenaged girl and an unborn child. 

For years afterward, loved ones kept memorial crosses atop this pile of stones, but vandals repeatedly tore down the memorials until the loved ones gave up and settled for just the pile of stones.

On Memorial Day, someone had brought these wreathes and placed them here. 

Let us hope that respect and compassion can now replace ignorance and cruelty in the hearts of the vandals.

I stopped on the bridge over the Little Susistna River. These two came by as part of a carvan of four-wheelers.

I have crossed the bridge a number of times since I began biking again, but I had not gone down to the river itself. Today, I did - and symbolically put my front wheel in the water.

I do not know what this symbolizes, but it must symbolize something.

On the bank and in the shallows, people frolicked.

When I returned home, I found Margie and Lavina repairing the picnic table.

Inside, I found the boys napping. I then went off to buy some iced drinks and to fill the tank with expensive gas. When I returned, the boys had not moved at all.

Lavina began the cooking by roasting bread on the barbecue.

If one studies all the faces in this picture and then gives some thought to it... it is just incredible to think about, to ponder the history, the sorrows, the changes, distances covered, the links from then until now.

Lavina kept the grill going.

And then we ate - but Kalib was napping and Caleb was sleeping in prep for his night shift.

And then, somewhere between nine and ten PM, it came time to say goodbye.

Margie and I had enjoyed the rapidly enlarging little ones for three days, but now they were going.

Caleb missed everything. He slept through breakfast. He slept through the water battle. He slept through dinner. But he awoke in time to say goodbye.

And then off they went, the people in the car and Muzzy running alongside, all the way back to Anchorage.

Well, I exaggerate a little. Muzzy would only run to the stop sign, about 200 yards away. Then he would trade places with Jacob and drive the family home while Jacob ran alongside the car - all the way to Anchorage.

Don't worry. It's okay that the dog drove. Muzzy has a license.

I then found Margie in the back yard, cleaning up.

"It's too quiet now," she said.

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